The Ledge

The window screens in the dorm rooms have 'Do not remove' stickers on them now.

Such stickers did not exist a year ago, when I first moved in. I was an awkward Indian freshman, not ready to experience a foreign country or its people. Social interactions seemed like a very complicated phenomena, especially with people who wiped their butt with paper and called football 'soccer'. So it was a relief when my first roommate left after his first month in college, realizing college just wasn't his type of thing. I would like to believe that I was a big part of what drove him away though. The rest of Fall semester was uneventful. Everyday, I would return from class as soon as I could, watch illegal internet streams of a couple of Bollywood movies, skype with my mom and put off doing homework until I passed out from boredom and home sickness. It was nice to have the room to myself though. I could be naked when I wanted to and watch porn without headphones on. Sometimes I would sing loudly, belting out rock ballads from the seventies, hoping that the pretty girl on the floor above would hear and knock on my door. I would enchant her with my snake charmer-like charm and then we could make love to the rhythm of the strong winds that blew into my 8^th floor dorm room. But that never happened.

By the time Spring semester rolled around, I had forgotten that I was still paying for a 2-person room. I had gone home for Winter Break, so when I returned, following a 22 hour flight sequence, I was looking forward to collapsing onto the squeaky bed that awaited me. As I unlocked the door I found out that I couldn't. The beds were bunked and the lower bed had boxes lying on a star wars bedsheet. I stumbled over this huge black gourd shaped container. As I did my best impression of the Heisman to keep from falling face first into the wooden floor, I heard a voice that seemed to come from outside my window.

“Hey, Are you alright bro?”, questioned a lanky figure sitting on the ledge outside of the window. Panic and shock shivered through my spine as he stepped in and re-attached the screen to the window behind him.

“Yeah, I am fine. I just stumbled over this thing.”

“O yes, Sorry about that. I need to find a better place to keep my Tuba than right in front of the door”, he chuckled in sheepish embarrassment. “I am Jon by the way. Jonathan Dean Duhamel. You must be Neil?” I was still too shaken up by everything to add to the conversation, but I did respond to his inviting hand by shaking it.

“I suppose you didn't read the email about you new roomie. Well, its me”, he said with a smile stretching from one unkempt side burn to another. He wore a plain T-shirt, so black that his pale white skin really popped out. His spiky gelled-up red hair were a weird contrast to his tsunami hit side burns.

“Nice to meet you.” I finally spoke. “Were you just on the ledge outside?” I hoped the answer to that question would help me judge how crazy this new chapter of my life was going to be.

“O yeah. Had a long day moving in and all, so was just smoking a joint with the wind and the stars”, he looked at me expecting me to share his enchantment with weed and the universe. I responded with a blank look of disbelief. The disbelief you would experience when you just noticed someone sitting on a 3 ft wide ledge on the 8^th floor of a building.

“Sorry I did not mean to freak you out. You are welcome to smoke some with me.” He put down the window screen and was back on the ledge. I set my bags down and sat in the chair. As I calmed myself down I looked around the room. It looked much fancier then how I had left it. It had a microwave, a mini fridge. I saw biology books on his desk, next to some rolling paper and filters. There was also a very strange glass case like the ones in which you would store a baseball signed by Pete Rose. Only this just had a ball of crumbled up paper in it.

I realized my inadequacy in conversation might have come of as rude. I disliked interactions with humans, but I did not want to come of as rude to someone I would be living with. I slowly made my way to the window, leaned against it and blurted. “So are you pre-med?”

“Pre-nursing. I would like to wipe crap off of old saggy butts when I grow up.” He welcomed my conversational advance. I did not know sarcasm well enough yet to know whether he was really excited to be a nurse or not. Nonetheless, I found his comment moderately funny.

“Ah. Why nursing?”

“You see that glass case on my table. The paper inside was the last letter my grandma wrote from her senior living facility before she died from a heart attack. They said that the nurse refused to give her CPR because it was against policy.”

I was a little taken aback by the sudden change of tone in his voice. For a few minutes he was silent and so was I. I peeked my head out of the screenless window. The wind was strong, and the stars were needles poking through the infinite blanket of cosmic darkness.

The excitement of experiencing new things in a completely new world, kept me going during the first few months in college. But by the time March rolled around, I was missing home a lot. The more accustomed to the environment I got, the more alien it seemed to me. The roads were too smooth, and the cars too big. I thought the world is about to end when I saw the moon during day time for the first time in my life. Talking to people and making friends was a tiring process – the translator in my mind was constantly at work translating American words into Hindi thoughts and back to English sentences. I am sure I sounded like an British robot or that guy they heard on customer service. It was easier to talk to Jon though. He spoke less and really slowly, probably because he was high all the time. And most of it was vague poetic reflections, that could mean almost anything you want them to mean. It was entertaining to hear what he had to say to the questions I asked. I came to the room before him most nights, because he practiced with the jazz band. Most nights he would smoke weed on the window ledge. One night, I came back from a midnight hunger run to McDonalds, and found him outside with his Tuba.

“Playing to the wind again?”

“Always”, he replied as he moved his lips from the mouthpiece to the filer on the weed joint. He told me once that these were called roaches.

“So why the Tuba?” I had always been curious about that. For some reason my prejudiced mind always connected that instrument to some bulky music snob, not a scrawny punk rock ginger kid.

“You see that glass case on the table. The paper inside is a piece of sheet music for a Tuba. My dad once went and saw Miles Davis in concert. He was his favorite. At the end, the orchestra through its sheet music into the crowd. My dad caught that paper.”

Wait, What? I was rather confused. “I thought it was your grandma's letter”. He said nothing and went back to playing music. It is worthless to reason with a pothead I thought and left it at that. But this was not the last time this happened. Anytime he would find an appropriate opportunity, he would change the contents of the glass case. One day he would stare at a shooting star and tell me the paper wraps the meteorite rock he found while backpacking through Arizona. Another day we would be talking about women, and he would say the paper was a letter from his first girlfriend, listing all the things that were wrong with him. And I was not the only one. I would over hear the glass case story some times when he had a girl over. Most times he would text me “Peaches”, before I got to the room, which meant I needed sleep on the couch in the lobby that night.

Every night, I saw Jon on the ledge, staring into space. Space that, from his serene, content expression seemed like something really comforting. He never invited me to smoke with him after the first day. Though there was always an empty spot next to him on the ledge.

April 13^th was Baisakhi – the Indian festival which celebrates harvest and also the Hindu new year. My mom called me and told me all about the celebrations. She told me about the music, the food, the huge bonfire, and how the family was sitting outside where the elders are telling the stories of the harvest. She also told me that my sister-in-law was pregnant. I talked to my brother, conveyed my congratulations and how happy I was for him.

“So what have you been upto?”, he asked in response.

I wanted to say something but I couldn't. There seemed to be nothing to talk about. I searched for a good story, long and hard in my mind but I couldn't find it. “Nothing much. Just classes and work.”

When the call ended, I walked towards the window, then leaned against it. Jon had just bought a pipe. He was getting ready to put it to test.

“Everything okay Neil?”

“Why do you smoke Jon?”, I ignored his question.

“I brings me at peace with reality.”

I chuckled my pothead disclaimer chuckle.

“I am telling you man, this way my life is a glass case”, he coughed out through the smoke. And turned back to glance a look at his desk.

“What's in it anyways?”

He said nothing.

Reefer-talk has the opposite effect to alcohol. It will lay low and simmer in your head for a few hours and then show its effect. The next morning when I woke up, I felt high on reefer-talk. All day I thought about what he said and what he meant. Did it mean anything? I was jealous of his lack of restlessness. As I walked back from class towards my dorm, I had decided that I wanted to know what I feels like to be on that ledge. I speedily walked up the hill and as I approached the top of the hill where my dorm was, I saw a crowd of people gathered in the front lawn.

I cut through the bodies and the voices and reached the yellow tape. Jonathan Dean Duhamel lay there dead in a pool of blood, his body twisted at an odd angle. The police said he fell from his window on the 8^th floor.

I stood still. For a while, I closely looked at his face, to find the contentment that it usually had. There was inexplicable anger – as if he had robbed me of something. I stood there until my eyes were red and wet from soaking up all that blood. I ran up to my room which was being inspected by policemen. I was dazed. I couldn't hear exactly, but I think they wanted to question me about the marijuana found on the ledge. The window was open and the ledge was empty. I walked straight to his desk and opened the glass case. I straightened out the paper. It had writing on it.

Dear Jon,

When you read this I will be gone. They will tell you that you will never be able to see me, touch me or hear me. That we will never sing together, laugh together or cry together. That I will never hold you in my arms and you will never hold me. They are wrong. I will be where you want me, when you want me and what you want me to be. Just think of me and I will be there.

Don't let anyone else tell you what you can or cannot have. Don't let anyone else make your memories. Be your own man, Write your own story.

I Love you so much.

Mom

Jon wrote his own story - the jazz loving, punk-rock pot head who fell to his death. He even sold it for some money. From then on they put stickers on the windows, the removal of which would end up in the two hundred and fifty dollar fine for the resident.

I could never go onto the ledge. I moved into an apartment. This one has a balcony.